Electrical and Electronics Drafters Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Electrical and Electronics Drafters offer sit among all 20,020 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 20,020 jobs nationally, Electrical and Electronics Drafters make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 3,020 of those jobs, the top three states hold 32.0%, and the deepest concentration sits in New Mexico (location quotient 3.10, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $48,680 or less, and one in ten earns $110,180 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.3 to 1 and the annual gap is $61,500. The mean ($77,960) versus median ($73,720) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Electrical and Electronics Drafters runs from the $101,680 median in New Hampshire down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (3,020 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Electrical and Electronics Drafters stands number 562 by employment and number 262 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Architecture and Engineering Occupations, the group median wage is $96,690 across 36 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 24% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.8% of the group's 2,567,220 jobs. In 16 of the 43 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $73,720, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is the largest metro employer with 980 jobs, 4.9% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $72,420 a year, against $104,730 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Electrical and Electronics Drafters paycheck, gross, is $2,835 every two weeks on an annual $73,720, which is $6,143 a month and $1,418 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($58,800) to the 75th ($91,780) is worth $32,980 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $81,092 would sit between the median ($73,720) and the 75th percentile ($91,780), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $58,800, is $14,920 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Architecture and Engineering Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Industrial Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Engineers, All Other, Architects, Except Landscape and Naval, Architectural and Civil Drafters. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.